On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Philip S. Tellis spake thusly:
On 12 Sep 2003, q u a s i wrote:
If you are going to use it, isnt it better off in the kernel? It will be fractionally faster than loading from disk.
Actually speed has nothing to do with it. See, using frame buffer requires switching the BIOS display mode. This can only be done while the processor is still in real mode. Once the processor enters protected mode (which is one of the first things the kernel does), it is impossible to make a BIOS call.
I fear I disagree. Using framebuffer does /not/ require switching the BIOS display mode. Using vesafb requires that. That is the reason, if you are using vesafb, you cannot switch modes once you boot. VESA is generic and implimented in the BIOS (or VGA BIOS).
Card specific framebuffer drivers can be loaded at runtime. Modes can be changed anytime.
He was talking about the i810 driver. And I was talking in general about putting required modules into the kernel. It saves a bit of time which modprobe requires. And i did say 'fractionally'. :-)